Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - biography, information, personal life. Biography Where did Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich serve?

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Born on August 28 (September 9) 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, Russian Empire - died on November 7 (20), 1910 at Astapovo station, Ryazan province. One of the most widely known Russian writers and thinkers, revered as one of the greatest writers in the world. Member of the defense of Sevastopol. The educator, publicist, religious thinker, his authoritative opinion was the reason for the emergence of a new religious and moral trend - Tolstoyism. Corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (1873), honorary academician in the category of fine literature (1900).

A writer who was recognized as the head of Russian literature during his lifetime. Leo Tolstoy's work marked a new stage in Russian and world realism, acting as a bridge between the classic novel of the 19th century and the literature of the 20th century. Leo Tolstoy had a strong influence on the evolution of European humanism, as well as on the development of realistic traditions in world literature. The works of Leo Tolstoy were filmed and staged many times in the USSR and abroad; his plays have been performed on stages all over the world.

The most famous works by Tolstoy are the novels "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection", the autobiographical trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", the stories "Cossacks", "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "Kreutserov sonata ”,“ Hadji Murad ”, a cycle of essays“ Sevastopol Tales ”, dramas“ Living Corpse ”and“ Power of Darkness ”, autobiographical religious and philosophical works“ Confession ”and“ What is My Faith? ” and etc..

Descended from the Tolstoy noble family, known since 1351. The features of Ilya Andreevich's grandfather are given in War and Peace to the good-natured, impractical old Count Rostov. The son of Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794-1837), was the father of Lev Nikolaevich. With some character traits and biographical facts, he was similar to Nikolenka's father in Childhood and Adolescence, and partly to Nikolai Rostov in War and Peace. However, in real life, Nikolai Ilyich differed from Nikolai Rostov not only in his good education, but also in his convictions that did not allow him to serve under Nikolai I.

A participant in the foreign campaign of the Russian army against, including participating in the "Battle of the Nations" near Leipzig and was captured by the French, but was able to escape, after the conclusion of peace he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd hussar regiment. Soon after his resignation, he was forced to join the civil service so as not to end up in a debt prison due to the debts of his father, the Kazan governor, who died under investigation for official abuse. The negative example of his father helped Nikolai Ilyich develop his life ideal - a private, independent life with family joys. To put his upset affairs in order, Nikolai Ilyich (like Nikolai Rostov), ​​married a not very young princess Maria Nikolaevna from the Volkonsky clan in 1822, the marriage was happy. They had five children: Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergei (1826-1904), Dmitry (1827-1856), Leo, Maria (1830-1912).

Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, the general of Catherine, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, had some resemblance to the stern rigorist - the old prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace. Lev Nikolaevich's mother, similar in some respects to Princess Marya, depicted in War and Peace, possessed the remarkable gift of a storyteller.

In addition to the Volkonskys, L.N. Tolstoy was closely related to some other aristocratic families: the princes Gorchakov, Trubetskoy and others.

Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province, on the hereditary estate of his mother - Yasnaya Polyana. Was the fourth child in the family. The mother died in 1830, six months after the birth of her daughter from “birth fever,” as they said then, when Leo was not yet 2 years old.

A distant relative T.A.Yergolskaya took up the upbringing of orphaned children. In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, settling on Plyushchikha, as the eldest son had to prepare to enter the university. Soon, his father, Nikolai Ilyich, suddenly died, leaving business (including some litigation related to the family's property) unfinished, and the three youngest children settled again in Yasnaya Polyana under the supervision of Ergolskaya and paternal aunt, Countess A.M. Osten-Saken appointed guardian of the children. Lev Nikolayevich stayed here until 1840, when Countess Osten-Saken died, and the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - father's sister P.I. Yushkova.

The Yushkovs' house was considered one of the funniest in Kazan; all family members highly appreciated the external brilliance. " My good aunt,- says Tolstoy, - pure being, she always said that she would not want anything more for me than that I had a relationship with a married woman».

Lev Nikolaevich wanted to shine in society, but he was hampered by natural shyness and lack of external attractiveness. The most diverse, as Tolstoy himself defines them, "speculations" about the main issues of our life - happiness, death, God, love, eternity - left an imprint on his character in that era of life. What he told in "Adolescence" and "Youth", in the novel "Resurrection" about the aspirations of Irteniev and Nekhlyudov for self-improvement is taken by Tolstoy from the history of his own ascetic attempts of that time. All this, wrote the critic S. A. Vengerov, led to the fact that Tolstoy created, according to the expression from his story "Boyhood", "The habit of constant moral analysis, which destroyed the freshness of feeling and clarity of reason".

His education was originally taken up by the French governor Saint-Thomas (the prototype of St.-Jérôme in the story "Boyhood"), who replaced the good-natured German Reselman, whom Tolstoy portrayed in the story "Childhood" under the name of Karl Ivanovich.

In 1843 P.I. Yushkova, taking on the role of guardian of her underage nephews (only the eldest, Nikolai, was an adult) and nieces, brought them to Kazan. Following brothers Nikolai, Dmitry and Sergey, Lev decided to enter the Imperial Kazan University, where they worked at the Faculty of Mathematics Lobachevsky, and at the East Faculty - Kovalevsky. On October 3, 1844, Leo Tolstoy was enrolled as a student of the category of Eastern (Arabic-Turkish) literature as a self-employed person who paid for his education. In the entrance exams, in particular, he showed excellent results in the "Turkish-Tatar language" compulsory for admission. According to the results of the year, he had poor progress in the relevant subjects, did not pass the transition exam and had to re-pass the first year program.

To avoid a complete repetition of the course, he transferred to the Faculty of Law, where his problems with grades in some subjects continued. The May 1846 transient exams were passed satisfactorily (he received one A, three A's and four Cs; the average conclusion was three), and Lev Nikolayevich was transferred to the second year. Lev Tolstoy spent less than two years at the Faculty of Law: "Any education imposed by others was always difficult for him, and everything that he learned in life - he learned himself, suddenly, quickly, with hard work.", - writes S. A. Tolstaya in his "Materials for the biography of L. N. Tolstoy."

In 1904, he recalled: “For the first year ... I didn’t do anything. In the second year I began to study ... Professor Meyer was there, who ... gave me a job - comparing Catherine's Order with Esprit des lois (Spirit of the Laws). ... I was carried away by this work, I went to the village, began to read Montesquieu, this reading opened up endless horizons for me; I started reading and dropped out of university precisely because I wanted to study ".

From March 11, 1847, Tolstoy was in the Kazan hospital, on March 17 he began to keep a diary, where, imitating, he set himself goals and objectives for self-improvement, noted successes and failures in performing these tasks, analyzed his shortcomings and train of thought, motives of his actions. He kept this diary with short interruptions throughout his life.

After finishing treatment, in the spring of 1847, Tolstoy left his studies at the university and went to the Yasnaya Polyana section, which he inherited; his activities there are partly described in the work "The Morning of the Landowner": Tolstoy tried to establish in a new way relations with the peasants. His attempt to somehow smooth over the young landowner's feeling of guilt before the people dates back to the same year when D. V. Grigorovich's "Anton-Goremyka" and the beginning of "Notes of a Hunter" appeared.

In his diary, Tolstoy formulated for himself a large number of life rules and goals, but he managed to follow only a small part of them. Among those who succeeded are serious classes in English, music, and jurisprudence. In addition, neither the diary nor the letters reflected the beginning of Tolstoy's studies in pedagogy and charity, although in 1849 he first opened a school for peasant children. The main teacher was Foka Demidovich, a serf, but Lev Nikolayevich himself often taught classes.

In mid-October 1848, Tolstoy left for Moscow, settling where many of his relatives and acquaintances lived - in the Arbat area. He stayed at Ivanova's house on Nikolopeskovsky Lane. In Moscow, he was going to start preparing for passing the candidate exams, but the classes were never started. Instead, he was attracted by a completely different side of life - social life. In addition to being passionate about social life, in Moscow, in the winter of 1848-1849, Lev Nikolaevich first developed a passion for the card game... But since he played very recklessly and did not always think over his moves, he often lost.

Having left for St. Petersburg in February 1849, he spent time in revelry with K. A. Islavin- the uncle of his future wife ( "My love for Islavin ruined for me the whole 8 months of my life in St. Petersburg"). In the spring, Tolstoy began to take the exam for a candidate for rights; he passed two exams, from criminal law and criminal proceedings, successfully, but he did not take the third exam and left for the village.

Later he came to Moscow, where he often spent time gambling, which often negatively affected his financial situation. During this period of his life, Tolstoy was especially passionately interested in music (he himself played the piano well and greatly appreciated his favorite works performed by others). His passion for music prompted him later to write The Kreutzer Sonata.

Favorite composers of Tolstoy were Bach, Handel and. The development of Tolstoy's love for music was also facilitated by the fact that during a trip to St. Petersburg in 1848 he met in a rather unsuitable dance-class setting with a gifted but disoriented German musician, whom he later described in the story "Albert". In 1849, Lev Nikolayevich settled in his Yasnaya Polyana musician Rudolph, with whom he played four hands on the piano. Carried away at that time by music, he played works by Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn for several hours a day. In the late 1840s, Tolstoy, in collaboration with his friend Zybin, composed a waltz, which in the early 1900s he performed under the composer S.I.Taneev, who made the musical notation of this piece of music (the only one composed by Tolstoy). Much time was also spent on revelry, play and hunting.

In the winter of 1850-1851. began to write "Childhood". In March 1851 he wrote The History of Yesterday. Four years after he left the university, Lev Nikolayevich's brother Nikolai, who served in the Caucasus, came to Yasnaya Polyana, who invited his younger brother to join the military service in the Caucasus. Lev did not agree immediately, until a major loss in Moscow precipitated the final decision. The writer's biographers note the significant and positive influence of brother Nicholas on the young and inexperienced Leo in everyday affairs. The elder brother, in the absence of his parents, was his friend and mentor.

To pay off the debts, it was necessary to reduce their expenses to a minimum - and in the spring of 1851, Tolstoy hastily left Moscow for the Caucasus without a specific goal. Soon he decided to enter the military service, but for this he lacked the necessary documents left in Moscow, in anticipation of which Tolstoy lived for about five months in Pyatigorsk, in a simple hut. He spent a significant part of his time hunting, in the company of the Cossack Epishka, the prototype of one of the heroes of the story "Cossacks", who appears there under the name of Eroshka.

In the fall of 1851, Tolstoy, having passed an exam in Tiflis, entered the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladovskaya on the banks of the Terek, near Kizlyar, as a cadet. With some changes in details, she is depicted in the story "Cossacks". The story reproduces a picture of the inner life of a young master who fled from Moscow life. In the Cossack village, Tolstoy began to write again and in July 1852 sent to the editorial office of the most popular magazine Sovremennik at that time the first part of the future autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, signed only with initials "L. N. T. "... When sending the manuscript to the journal, Lev Tolstoy attached a letter, which said: “... I look forward to your verdict. He will either encourage me to continue my favorite activities, or make me burn everything I started. ".

Having received the manuscript of Childhood, the editor of Sovremennik immediately recognized its literary value and wrote the author a kind letter, which had a very encouraging effect on him. In a letter to I.S.Turgenev, Nekrasov noted: "This talent is new and seems to be reliable."... The manuscript of the as yet unknown author was published in September of the same year. Meanwhile, the aspiring and inspired author set about continuing the tetralogy "Four Epochs of Development", the last part of which - "Youth" - did not take place. He pondered the plot of "The Morning of the Landowner" (the finished story was only a fragment of the "Novel of the Russian Landowner"), "Raid", "Cossacks". Published in Sovremennik on September 18, 1852, Childhood was an extraordinary success; after the publication of the author, they immediately began to rank among the luminaries of the young literary school, along with I.S.Turgenev, D.V. Critics Apollon Grigoriev, Annenkov, Druzhinin, appreciated the depth of psychological analysis, the seriousness of the author's intentions and the bright convexity of realism.

The relatively late start of the career is very characteristic of Tolstoy: he never considered himself a professional writer, understanding professionalism not in the sense of a profession that provides a means of livelihood, but in the sense of the predominance of literary interests. He did not take to heart the interests of literary parties, he was reluctant to talk about literature, preferring to talk about questions of faith, morality, and social relations.

As a cadet, Lev Nikolayevich remained for two years in the Caucasus, where he participated in many skirmishes with the highlanders led by Shamil, and was exposed to the dangers of military Caucasian life. He had the right to the Cross of St. George, however, in accordance with his convictions, he "yielded" to his fellow soldier, believing that a significant relief of the conditions of service of a colleague is above personal vanity.

With the outbreak of the Crimean War, Tolstoy transferred to the Danube army, took part in the battle of Oltenitsa and in the siege of Silistria, and from November 1854 to the end of August 1855 he was in Sevastopol.

For a long time he lived on the 4th bastion, which was often attacked, commanded a battery in the battle at Chornaya, was during the bombardment during the assault on Malakhov Kurgan. Tolstoy, despite all the everyday hardships and horrors of the siege, at this time wrote the story "Cutting the forest", which reflected the Caucasian impressions, and the first of the three "Sevastopol stories" - "Sevastopol in December 1854". He sent this story to Sovremennik. It was quickly published and read with interest by the whole of Russia, making a stunning impression with a picture of the horrors that befell the defenders of Sevastopol. The tale was noticed by the Russian emperor; he ordered to take care of the gifted officer.

Even during the life of Emperor Nicholas I, Tolstoy planned to publish, together with the artillery officers, the "cheap and popular" magazine "Military Leaflet", but Tolstoy failed to implement the magazine project: "For the project, my Sovereign Emperor most mercifully deigned to allow us to publish our articles in" Invalid ""- Tolstoy bitterly sarcastically about this.

For the defense of Sevastopol, Tolstoy was awarded the Order of St. Anne of the 4th degree with the inscription "For Bravery", medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol 1854-1855" and "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856." Subsequently, he was awarded two medals "In Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Defense of Sevastopol": a silver one as a participant in the defense of Sevastopol and a bronze one as the author of "Sevastopol Tales".

Tolstoy, using his reputation as a brave officer and surrounded by the brilliance of fame, had every chance of a career. However, his career was spoiled by the writing of several satirical songs, stylized as soldiers. One of these songs was dedicated to the failure during the battle at the Chernaya River on August 4 (16), 1855, when General Read, misunderstanding the command of the commander-in-chief, attacked Fedyukhin Heights. A song called "As of the fourth, the mountains carried us hard to take away", which affected a number of important generals, was a huge success. For her, Lev Nikolaevich had to answer to the assistant chief of staff A.A. Yakimakh.

Immediately after the assault on August 27 (September 8), Tolstoy was sent by courier to St. Petersburg, where he finished "Sevastopol in May 1855" and wrote "Sevastopol in August 1855", published in the first issue of "Sovremennik" for 1856, already with the full signature of the author. "Sevastopol Tales" finally strengthened his reputation as a representative of the new literary generation, and in November 1856 the writer left military service forever.

In St. Petersburg, the young writer was warmly welcomed in high-society salons and literary circles. The closest he became friends with I.S.Turgenev, with whom they lived for some time in the same apartment. Turgenev introduced him to the Sovremennik circle, after which Tolstoy established friendly relations with such famous writers as N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Goncharov, I. I. Panaev, D. V. Grigorovich, A. V. Druzhinin, V.A. Sollogub.

At this time, "Blizzard", "Two Hussars" were written, "Sevastopol in August" and "Youth" were completed, the writing of future "Cossacks" was continued.

However, a cheerful and eventful life left a bitter residue in Tolstoy's soul, at the same time he began to have a strong discord with the circle of writers close to him. As a result, “the people were disgusted with him, and he was disgusted with himself” - and at the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy left Petersburg without any regret and went abroad.

On his first trip abroad, he visited Paris, where he was horrified by the cult of Napoleon I ("Deification of the villain, terrible"), at the same time he attended balls, museums, admired the "sense of social freedom." However, the presence at the guillotine made such a heavy impression that Tolstoy left Paris and went to places associated with the French writer and thinker J.-J. Rousseau - to Lake Geneva. In the spring of 1857, I.S.Turgenev described his meetings with Leo Tolstoy in Paris after his sudden departure from St. Petersburg: “Indeed, Paris does not at all fit in with its spiritual order; he is a strange person, I have not met such and do not quite understand. A mixture of poet, Calvinist, fanatic, barich - something reminiscent of Rousseau, but more honest Rousseau - a highly moral and at the same time unsympathetic creature ".

Trips to Western Europe - Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Italy (in 1857 and 1860-1861) made a rather negative impression on him. He expressed his disappointment with the European way of life in the story "Lucerne". Tolstoy's disappointment was caused by the deep contrast between wealth and poverty, which he was able to see through the magnificent outer veneer of European culture.

Lev Nikolaevich writes the story "Albert". At the same time, friends do not cease to be amazed at his eccentricities: in his letter to I.S.Turgenev in the fall of 1857, P.V. Annenkov told Tolstoy's project of planting forests throughout Russia, and in his letter to V.P. Botkin, Leo Tolstoy said that he was very happy the fact that he did not become only a writer despite the advice of Turgenev. However, in the interval between the first and second trips, the writer continued to work on "Cossacks", wrote the story "Three Deaths" and the novel "Family Happiness".

The last novel was published by him in the "Russian Bulletin" by Mikhail Katkov. Tolstoy's collaboration with the Sovremennik magazine, which had been going on since 1852, ended in 1859. In the same year, Tolstoy took part in organizing the Literary Fund. But his life was not limited to literary interests: on December 22, 1858, he almost died in a bear hunt.

Around the same time, he began an affair with a peasant woman Aksinya Bazykina, and plans to marry are ripening.

On the next trip, he was mainly interested in public education and institutions aimed at raising the educational level of the working population. He closely studied the issues of public education in Germany and France, both theoretically and practically - in conversations with specialists. Of the outstanding people in Germany, he was most interested in him as the author of the "Black Forest Tales" dedicated to folk life and as a publisher of folk calendars. Tolstoy paid him a visit and tried to get closer to him. In addition, he also met with the German teacher Diesterweg. During his stay in Brussels, Tolstoy met Proudhon and Lelevel. In London, I attended, was at a lecture.

Tolstoy's serious mood during his second trip to the south of France was further facilitated by the fact that his beloved brother Nikolai almost died of tuberculosis in his arms. The death of his brother made a huge impression on Tolstoy.

Gradually criticism for 10-12 years cooled to Leo Tolstoy, until the very appearance of "War and Peace", and he himself did not strive for rapprochement with writers, making an exception only for. One of the reasons for this alienation was Leo Tolstoy's quarrel with Turgenev, which occurred at a time when both prose writers were visiting Fet on the Stepanovka estate in May 1861. The quarrel almost ended in a duel and spoiled the relationship between the writers for 17 years.

In May 1862, Lev Nikolaevich, suffering from depression, on the recommendation of doctors, went to the Bashkir farm Karalik, Samara province, to be treated with the new and fashionable method of kumis therapy at that time. Initially, he was going to be in the Postnikov kumys hospital near Samara, but, having learned that at the same time, a lot of high-ranking officials should have arrived (a secular society, which the young count could not stand), went to the Bashkir nomadic Karalik, on the Karalik river, in 130 miles from Samara. There, Tolstoy lived in a Bashkir kibitka (yurt), ate lamb, took sun baths, drank kumis, tea, and also played checkers with the Bashkirs. The first time he stayed there for a month and a half. In 1871, when he had already written "War and Peace", he again came there due to deteriorating health. He wrote about his impressions as follows: "Longing and indifference have passed, I feel myself coming into a Scythian state, and everything is interesting and new ... A lot is new and interesting: the Bashkirs, from whom the smell of Herodotus, and Russian peasants, and villages, especially charming in the simplicity and kindness of the people".

Fascinated by Karalik, Tolstoy bought an estate in these places, and already the next summer, 1872, he spent with his whole family in it.

In July 1866, Tolstoy appeared at the court-martial as a defender of Vasil Shabunin, a company clerk who was stationed near Yasnaya Polyana of the Moscow infantry regiment. Shabunin hit the officer, who ordered to punish him with rods for being drunk. Tolstoy proved Shabunin's insanity, but the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Shabunin was shot. This episode made a great impression on Tolstoy, since he saw in this terrible phenomenon the merciless force, which was a state based on violence. On this occasion, he wrote to his friend, publicist P.I.Biryukov: "This incident had much more impact on my whole life than all the seemingly more important events in my life: the loss or improvement of the state, the successes or failures in literature, even the loss of loved ones.".

During the first 12 years after his marriage, he created War and Peace and Anna Karenina. At the turn of this second era of Tolstoy's literary life, there are the Cossacks, conceived back in 1852 and completed in 1861-1862, the first of the works in which the talent of the mature Tolstoy was best realized.

The main interest of creativity for Tolstoy manifested itself "in the" history "of characters, in their continuous and complex movement, development." Its goal was to show the ability of a person to moral growth, improvement, opposition to the environment, relying on the strength of his own soul.

The release of War and Peace was preceded by work on the novel The Decembrists (1860-1861), to which the author repeatedly returned, but which remained unfinished. And War and Peace had an unprecedented success. An excerpt from a novel entitled "Year 1805" appeared in the Russian Bulletin of 1865; in 1868, three parts came out, followed shortly by the other two. The first four volumes of War and Peace quickly sold out, and a second edition was needed, which was released in October 1868. The fifth and sixth volumes of the novel were published in one edition, already printed in an increased circulation.

"War and Peace" became a unique phenomenon both in Russian and foreign literature. This work has absorbed all the depth and intimacy of a psychological novel with the scope and multi-figuredness of an epic fresco. The writer, according to V. Ya. Lakshin, turned to "the special state of the people's consciousness in the heroic time of 1812, when people from different strata of the population united in resistance to foreign invasion," which, in turn, "created the basis for an epic."

The author showed the national Russian features in the "latent warmth of patriotism", in aversion to ostentatious heroism, in a calm faith in justice, in the humble dignity and courage of ordinary soldiers. He portrayed Russia's war with Napoleonic troops as a nationwide war. The epic style of the work is conveyed through the completeness and plasticity of the image, the ramification and intersection of destinies, incomparable pictures of Russian nature.

In Tolstoy's novel, the most diverse strata of society are widely represented, from emperors and kings to soldiers, all ages and all temperaments in the space of the reign of Alexander I.

Tolstoy was pleased with his own work, but already in January 1871 he sent a letter to A.A. Fet: "How happy I am ... that I will never write verbose nonsense like 'War' again."... However, Tolstoy hardly neglected the importance of his previous creations. When asked by Tokutomi Roka in 1906 which work Tolstoy loves most of all, the writer replied: "The novel" War and Peace "".

In March 1879, in Moscow, Leo Tolstoy met Vasily Petrovich Shchegolenok, and in the same year, at his invitation, he came to Yasnaya Polyana, where he stayed for about a month or a month and a half. The goldfinch told Tolstoy a lot of folk tales, epics and legends, of which more than twenty were written down by Tolstoy, and the plots of some Tolstoy, if he did not write down on paper, then he remembered: six works written by Tolstoy have a source of the stories of the Goldfinch (1881 - "How People Live" , 1885 - "Two Old Men" and "Three Elders", 1905 - "Korney Vasiliev" and "Prayer", 1907 - "An Old Man in the Church"). In addition, Tolstoy diligently wrote down many sayings, proverbs, individual expressions and words told by the Goldfinch.

Tolstoy's new outlook on the world was most fully expressed in his works "Confession" (1879-1880, published in 1884) and "What is my faith?" (1882-1884). Tolstoy dedicated the story The Kreutzer Sonata (1887-1889, published 1891) and The Devil (1889-1890, published 1911) to the theme of the Christian principle of love, devoid of all self-interest and rising above sensual love in the struggle with the flesh. In the 1890s, trying to theoretically substantiate his views on art, he wrote the treatise What is Art? (1897-1898). But the main artistic work of those years was his novel "Resurrection" (1889-1899), the plot of which was based on a genuine court case. Sharp criticism of church rites in this work became one of the reasons for the excommunication of Tolstoy by the Holy Synod from the Orthodox Church in 1901. The highest achievements of the early 1900s were the story Hadji Murad and the drama The Living Corpse. In Hadji Murad, the despotism of Shamil and Nicholas I is equally exposed. In the story, Tolstoy glorified the courage of struggle, the strength of resistance and the love of life. The play "Living Corpse" became evidence of Tolstoy's new artistic quests, objectively close to Chekhov's drama.

At the beginning of his reign, Tolstoy wrote to the emperor with a request to pardon the regicides in the spirit of gospel forgiveness. From September 1882, secret supervision was established over him to clarify relations with the sectarians; in September 1883 he refused to serve as a juror, arguing that the refusal was incompatible with his religious worldview. Then he received a ban on public speaking in connection with the death of Turgenev. Gradually, the ideas of Tolstoyism begin to penetrate into society. At the beginning of 1885, a precedent of refusal to military service takes place in Russia with reference to Tolstoy's religious beliefs. A significant part of Tolstoy's views could not receive open expression in Russia and were fully presented only in foreign editions of his religious and social treatises.

There was no unanimity in relation to the artistic works of Tolstoy, written during this period. So, in a long series of small stories and legends, intended mainly for folk reading ("How people live", etc.), Tolstoy, in the opinion of his unconditional admirers, reached the pinnacle of artistic power. At the same time, according to people who reproach Tolstoy for turning from an artist into a preacher, these artistic teachings, written with a definite purpose, were crudely tendentious.

The lofty and terrible truth of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", according to fans, putting this work on a par with the main works of Tolstoy's genius, according to others, is deliberately harsh, it sharply emphasized the soullessness of the upper strata of society in order to show the moral superiority of a simple "kitchen man »Gerasim. The Kreutzer Sonata (written in 1887-1889, published in 1890) also evoked opposite reviews - an analysis of marital relations made one forget about the amazing brightness and passion with which this story was written. The work was banned by the censorship, it was published thanks to the efforts of S.A. Tolstoy, who achieved a meeting with Alexander III. As a result, the story was published in a truncated form by the censorship in the Collected Works of Tolstoy with the personal permission of the tsar. Alexander III was pleased with the story, but the queen was shocked. But the folk drama The Power of Darkness, in the opinion of Tolstoy's admirers, became a great manifestation of his artistic power: Tolstoy managed to accommodate so many common human features within the narrow framework of ethnographic reproduction of Russian peasant life that the drama with tremendous success bypassed all the scenes of the world.

During the famine of 1891-1892. Tolstoy organized institutions in the Ryazan province to help the hungry and the needy. He opened 187 canteens, in which 10 thousand people were fed, as well as several canteens for children, distributed firewood, distributed seeds and potatoes for sowing, bought and distributed horses to farmers (almost all farms were deprived of horses in a hungry year), in the form of donations were almost 150,000 rubles were raised.

The treatise "The Kingdom of God is within you ..." was written by Tolstoy with small interruptions for almost 3 years: from July 1890 to May 1893. E. Repin ("this thing of terrifying power") could not be published in Russia due to censorship, and it was published abroad. The book began to be illegally distributed in a huge number of copies in Russia. In Russia itself, the first legal edition appeared in July 1906, but even after that it was withdrawn from sale. The treatise was included in Tolstoy's collected works, published in 1911, after his death.

In the last major work, the novel "Resurrection", published in 1899, Tolstoy condemned judicial practice and high society life, portrayed the clergy and worship as secular and united with secular power.

The second half of 1879 became a turning point away from the teachings of the Orthodox Church. In the 1880s, he took the position of an unequivocally critical attitude towards church doctrine, clergy, and official church life. The publication of some of Tolstoy's works was prohibited by both spiritual and secular censors. In 1899 Tolstoy's novel "Resurrection" was published, in which the author showed the life of various social strata of contemporary Russia; the clergy were depicted as mechanically and hastily performing the rituals, and some took the cold and cynical Toporov for a caricature of the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod.

Leo Tolstoy applied his teaching primarily in relation to his own way of life. He denied church interpretations of immortality and rejected church authority; he did not recognize the state in rights, since it is built (in his opinion) on violence and coercion. He criticized the church teaching, according to which “life as it is here on earth, with all its joys, beauties, with all the struggle of reason against darkness, is the life of all people who lived before me, my whole life with my inner struggle and victories of reason there is not a true life, but a fallen life, hopelessly spoiled; true life, sinless - in faith, that is, in the imagination, that is, in madness. " Leo Tolstoy did not agree with the teaching of the Church that a person from his birth, in essence, is vicious and sinful, since, in his opinion, such a teaching "cuts to the root of everything that is best in human nature." Seeing how the church was rapidly losing its influence on the people, the writer, according to KN Lomunov, came to the conclusion: "All living things are independent of the church."

In February 1901, the Synod finally inclined to the idea of ​​publicly condemning Tolstoy and declaring him to be outside the church. Metropolitan Anthony (Vadkovsky) played an active role in this. As it appears in the chamber-furrier magazines, on February 22 Pobedonostsev visited Nicholas II in the Winter Palace and talked with him for about an hour. Some historians believe that Pobedonostsev came to the tsar directly from the Synod with a ready-made definition.

In November 1909, he wrote down a thought that indicated his broad understanding of religion: “I do not want to be a Christian, just as I did not advise and would not want to have Brahmanists, Buddhists, Confuciations, Taoists, Mohammedans and others. We must all find, each in his own faith, that which is common to all, and, abandoning the exclusive, our own, hold on to that which is common. ".

At the end of February 2001, the great-grandson of Count Vladimir Tolstoy, manager of the museum-estate of the writer in Yasnaya Polyana, sent a letter to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II with a request to revise the synodal definition. In response to the letter, the Moscow Patriarchate declared that the decision to excommunicate Leo Tolstoy from the Church, made exactly 105 years ago, cannot be reconsidered, since (according to the Secretary for Church Relations Mikhail Dudko), it would be wrong in the absence of a person against whom the action of the ecclesiastical court extends.

On the night of October 28 (November 10), 1910, Leo N. Tolstoy, fulfilling his decision to live the last years according to his views, secretly left Yasnaya Polyana forever, accompanied only by his doctor D. P. Makovitsky. At the same time, Tolstoy did not even have a definite plan of action. He began his last journey at the Shchekino station. On the same day, changing at the Gorbachevo station to another train, I drove to the city of Belyov, Tula province, then - in the same way, but on another train to the Kozelsk station, hired a driver and went to Optina Pustyn, and from there the next day - to Shamordinsky monastery, where he met his sister, Maria Nikolaevna Tolstoy. Later, Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra Lvovna, secretly arrived in Shamordino.

On the morning of October 31 (November 13), Leo Tolstoy and his entourage departed from Shamordino to Kozelsk, where they boarded the train No. 12, which had already reached the station, Smolensk - Ranenburg, following in an easterly direction. We didn’t have time to buy tickets at boarding; having reached Belyov, they bought tickets to the Volovo station, where they intended to change to a train going south. Those who accompanied Tolstoy later also testified that the trip had no definite purpose. After the meeting, they decided to go to his niece E. S. Denisenko, to Novocherkassk, where they wanted to try to get foreign passports and then go to Bulgaria; if this fails, go to the Caucasus. However, on the way, L.N. Tolstoy felt worse - the cold turned into croupous pneumonia and the accompanying people were forced to interrupt the trip on the same day and take the sick Tolstoy out of the train at the first large station near the village. This station was Astapovo (now Lev Tolstoy, Lipetsk region).

The news of Leo Tolstoy's illness caused great commotion both in the highest circles and among the members of the Holy Synod. Encrypted telegrams were systematically sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Moscow Gendarme Directorate of Railways about the state of his health and the state of affairs. An emergency secret meeting of the Synod was convened, at which, on the initiative of the chief prosecutor Lukyanov, the question was raised about the attitude of the church in the event of the sad outcome of Lev Nikolaevich's illness. But the question has not been positively resolved.

Six doctors tried to save Lev Nikolaevich, but to their offers to help he only replied: "God will arrange everything." When they asked him what he himself wanted, he said: "I want nobody to bother me." His last meaningful words, which he uttered a few hours before his death to his eldest son, which he could not make out from excitement, but which the doctor Makovitsky heard, were: "Seryozha ... the truth ... I love a lot, I love everyone ...".

On November 7 (20) at 6 hours 5 minutes after a week of a serious and painful illness (gasping for breath) Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died in the house of the station chief, I.I.Ozolin.

When L.N. Tolstoy came to Optina Pustyn before his death, the elder Barsanuphius was the abbot of the monastery and the head of the hermitage. Tolstoy did not dare to enter the skete, and the elder followed him to the Astapovo station in order to give him the opportunity to make peace with the Church. But he was not allowed to see the writer, just as his wife and some of his closest relatives from among the Orthodox believers were not allowed to see him.

On November 9, 1910, several thousand people gathered in Yasnaya Polyana for the funeral of Leo Tolstoy. Among those gathered were the writer's friends and fans of his work, local peasants and Moscow students, as well as representatives of state bodies and local police officers sent to Yasnaya Polyana by the authorities, who feared that the farewell ceremony with Tolstoy could be accompanied by anti-government statements, and perhaps even will result in a demonstration. In addition, in Russia it was the first public funeral of a famous person, which was not supposed to take place according to the Orthodox rite (without priests and prayers, without candles and icons), as Tolstoy himself wished. The ceremony was held peacefully, which was noted in the police reports. The mourners, observing complete order, with quiet singing, accompanied Tolstoy's coffin from the station to the estate. People lined up, silently entered the room to say goodbye to the body.

On the same day, the newspapers published the resolution of Nicholas II on the report of the Minister of Internal Affairs on the death of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy: “I sincerely regret the death of the great writer, who, during the heyday of his talent, embodied in his works the images of one of the glorious years of Russian life. May the Lord God be a merciful judge to him ".

On November 10 (23), 1910, Leo N. Tolstoy was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, on the edge of a ravine in the forest, where, as a child, he and his brother were looking for a "green stick" that kept the "secret" of how to make all people happy. When the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the grave, everyone present bowed their knees reverently.

Leo Tolstoy's family:

From his youth, Lev Nikolaevich was familiar with Lyubov Aleksandrovna Islavina, in marriage Bers (1826-1886), he loved to play with her children Liza, Sonya and Tanya. When the daughters of the Bersov grew up, Lev Nikolaevich thought about marrying his eldest daughter Lisa, hesitated for a long time until he made a choice in favor of his middle daughter Sophia. Sofya Andreevna agreed when she was 18 years old, and the count was 34 years old, and on September 23, 1862, Lev Nikolaevich married her, having previously admitted his premarital relations.

For some time in his life, the brightest period begins - he is truly happy, largely thanks to the practicality of his wife, material well-being, outstanding literary creativity and, in connection with it, all-Russian and world fame. In the person of his wife, he found an assistant in all matters, practical and literary - in the absence of the secretary, she rewrote his drafts several times. However, very soon, happiness is overshadowed by the inevitable petty quarrels, fleeting quarrels, mutual misunderstanding, which only worsened over the years.

For his family, Lev Tolstoy proposed a certain "life plan" according to which he intended to give part of his income to the poor and schools, and to simplify the lifestyle of his family (life, food, clothing), while also selling and distributing "everything unnecessary": piano, furniture, carriages. His wife, Sofya Andreevna, was clearly not satisfied with such a plan, on the basis of which the first serious conflict broke out in them and the beginning of her "undeclared war" for the secure future of their children. And in 1892, Tolstoy signed a separate act and transferred all the property to his wife and children, not wanting to be the owner. Nevertheless, together they lived in great love for almost fifty years.

In addition, his older brother Sergei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was going to marry Sofya Andreevna's younger sister, Tatyana Bers. But Sergei's unofficial marriage to the gypsy singer Maria Mikhailovna Shishkina (who had four children from him) made it impossible for Sergei and Tatiana to marry.

In addition, Sophia Andreevna's father, life-doctor Andrei Gustav (Evstafievich) Bers, even before his marriage to Islavina, had a daughter, Varvara, by Varvara Petrovna Turgeneva, the mother of Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. On her mother's side, Varya was Ivan Turgenev's sister, and on her father's side, S. A. Tolstoy, thus, together with his marriage, Leo Tolstoy acquired a relationship with I. S. Turgenev.

From the marriage of Lev Nikolaevich with Sofya Andreevna, 13 children were born, five of whom died in childhood. Children:

1. Sergei (1863-1947), composer, musicologist.
2. Tatiana (1864-1950). Since 1899 she has been married to Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin. In 1917-1923 she was the curator of the Yasnaya Polyana estate museum. In 1925 she emigrated with her daughter. Daughter Tatyana Mikhailovna Sukhotina-Albertini (1905-1996).
3. Ilya (1866-1933), writer, memoirist. In 1916 he left Russia and went to the USA.
4. Leo (1869-1945), writer, sculptor. In exile in France, Italy, then in Sweden.
5. Mary (1871-1906). Since 1897 she has been married to Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky (1872-1934). She died of pneumonia. Buried in the village. Kochaki, Krapivensky district (modern Tul. Region, Shchekinsky district, Kochaki village).
6. Peter (1872-1873)
7. Nikolay (1874-1875)
8. Barbarian (1875-1875)
9. Andrei (1877-1916), official for special assignments under the Tula governor. Member of the Russian-Japanese War. Died in Petrograd from general blood poisoning.
10. Michael (1879-1944). In 1920 he emigrated, lived in Turkey, Yugoslavia, France and Morocco. Died on October 19, 1944 in Morocco.
11. Alexey (1881-1886)
12. Alexandra (1884-1979). From the age of 16 she became an assistant to her father. For participation in the First World War, she was awarded three St. George's Crosses and was awarded the rank of colonel. In 1929 she emigrated from the USSR, in 1941 she received US citizenship. Died September 26, 1979 at Valley Cottage, New York.
13. Ivan (1888-1895).

As of 2010, in total, there were more than 350 descendants of L. N. Tolstoy (including both living and already dead) living in 25 countries of the world. Most of them are descendants of Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, who had 10 children, and the third son of Lev Nikolaevich. Since 2000, once every two years, meetings of the writer's descendants have been held in Yasnaya Polyana.

Quotes about Leo Tolstoy:

French writer and member of the French Academy André Maurois claimed that Leo Tolstoy is one of the three greatest writers in the entire history of culture (along with Shakespeare and Balzac).

German writer, Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature Thomas Mann said that the world did not know another artist in whom the epic, Homeric principle would be as strong as that of Tolstoy, and that the element of the epic and indestructible realism live in his creations.

The Indian philosopher and politician spoke of Tolstoy as the most honest man of his time, who never tried to hide the truth, embellish it, not fearing either spiritual or secular power, backing his preaching with deeds and making any sacrifices for the sake of the truth.

The Russian writer and thinker said in 1876 that only Tolstoy shines in that, in addition to the poem, "he knows to the smallest accuracy (historical and current) the depicted reality."

Russian writer and critic Dmitry Merezhkovsky wrote about Tolstoy: “His face is the face of humanity. If the inhabitants of other worlds asked our world: who are you? - humanity could answer by pointing to Tolstoy: here I am. "

The Russian poet spoke of Tolstoy: "Tolstoy is the greatest and only genius of modern Europe, the highest pride of Russia, a man whose only name is a fragrance, a writer of great purity and sacredness."

The Russian writer wrote in the English Lectures on Russian Literature: “Tolstoy is an unsurpassed Russian prose writer. Leaving aside his predecessors Pushkin and Lermontov, all the great Russian writers can be arranged in the following sequence: the first is Tolstoy, the second is Gogol, the third is Chekhov, and the fourth is Turgenev. "

Russian religious philosopher and writer V. V. Rozanov about Tolstoy: "Tolstoy is only a writer, but not a prophet, not a saint, and therefore his teaching does not inspire anyone."

Renowned theologian Alexander Men said that Tolstoy is still the voice of conscience and a living reproach for people who are confident that they live in accordance with moral principles.

Biography, life story of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Origin

Descended from a noble family, known, according to legendary sources, since 1351. His paternal ancestor, Count Pyotr Andreevich Tolstoy, is known for his role in the investigation of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich, for which he was placed at the head of the Secret Chancellery. The features of Pyotr Andreevich's great-grandson, Ilya Andreevich, are given in War and Peace to the good-natured, impractical old Count Rostov. The son of Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy (1794-1837), was the father of Lev Nikolaevich. With some character traits and biographical facts, he was similar to Nikolenka's father in Childhood and Adolescence, and partly to Nikolai Rostov in War and Peace. However, in real life, Nikolai Ilyich differed from Nikolai Rostov not only in his good education, but also in his convictions that did not allow him to serve under Nikolai. A participant in the foreign campaign of the Russian army against Napoleon, he also participated in the "Battle of the Nations" near Leipzig and was captured by the French, after the conclusion of peace he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd hussar regiment. Soon after his resignation, he was forced to join the civil service so as not to end up in a debt prison due to the debts of his father, the Kazan governor, who died under investigation for official abuse. The negative example of his father helped Nikolai Ilyich develop his life ideal - a private, independent life with family joys. To put his upset affairs in order, Nikolai Ilyich, like Nikolai Rostov, married a not very young princess from the Volkonsky clan; the marriage was happy. They had four sons: Nikolai, Sergey, Dmitry, Lev and daughter Maria.

Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, the general of Catherine, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, had some resemblance to the stern rigorist - the old prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace. Lev Nikolaevich's mother, similar in some respects to Princess Marya, depicted in War and Peace, had a wonderful gift of storytelling.

In addition to the Volkonskys, L.N. Tolstoy was closely related to some other aristocratic families: the princes Gorchakov, Trubetskoy and others.

CONTINUED BELOW

Born on August 28, 1828 in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province, in the hereditary estate of his mother - Yasnaya Polyana. Was the fourth child; he had three older brothers: Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergei (1826-1904) and Dmitry (1827-1856). Sister Maria (1830-1912) was born in 1830. His mother died with the birth of her last daughter, when he was not yet 2 years old.

A distant relative T.A.Yergolskaya took up the upbringing of orphaned children. In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, settling on Plyushchikha, because the eldest son had to prepare to enter the university, but his father suddenly died, leaving affairs (including some related to family property, litigation) unfinished, and the three youngest children again settled in Yasnaya Polyana under the supervision of Ergolskaya and her paternal aunt, Countess A.M. Osten-Saken, who was appointed guardian of the children. Lev Nikolayevich stayed here until 1840, when Countess Osten-Saken died, and the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - father's sister P.I. Yushkova.

The Yushkovs' house was one of the funniest in Kazan; all family members highly appreciated the external brilliance. "My good aunt," says Tolstoy, "is a pure being, she always said that she would not want anything more for me than for me to have a relationship with a married woman."

He wanted to shine in society, but he was hampered by natural shyness and lack of external attractiveness. The most diverse, as Tolstoy himself defines them, "speculations" about the main issues of our life - happiness, death, God, love, eternity - painfully tormented him in that era of life. What he told in "Adolescence" and "Youth" about the aspirations of Irteniev and Nekhlyudov for self-improvement was taken by Tolstoy from the history of his own ascetic attempts of that time. All this led to the fact that Tolstoy developed a "habit of constant moral analysis", as it seemed to him, "destroying the freshness of feeling and clarity of reason" ("Adolescence").

Education

His education went first under the guidance of the French governor Saint-Thomas (M-r Jerome "Boyhood"), who replaced the good-natured German Reselman, whom he portrayed in "Childhood" under the name of Karl Ivanovich.

In 1841, PI Yushkova, taking on the role of the guardian of her underage nephews (only the eldest, Nikolai, was an adult) and nieces, brought them to Kazan. Following brothers Nikolai, Dmitry and Sergey, Lev decided to enter the Imperial Kazan University, where they worked at the Faculty of Mathematics Lobachevsky, and at the East Faculty - Kovalevsky. On October 3, 1844, Lev Tolstoy was enrolled as a student of the category of oriental literature as his own. At the entrance exams, in particular, he showed excellent results in the compulsory "Turkish-Tatar language".

Due to the conflict between his family and the teacher of Russian and general history and the history of philosophy, Professor N. A. Ivanov, according to the results of the year, he had a failure in the relevant subjects and had to re-pass the first year program. To avoid a complete repetition of the course, he transferred to the Faculty of Law, where his problems with grades in Russian history and German continued. Lev Tolstoy stayed at the Faculty of Law for less than two years: “Any education imposed by others was always difficult for him, and everything that he learned in life - he learned himself, suddenly, quickly, with hard work,” Tolstaya writes in his “Materials for biographies of L. N. Tolstoy ". In 1904 he recalled: “ … For the first year… I didn’t do anything. In the second year I started studying ... Professor Meyer was there, who ... gave me a job - comparing Catherine's Order with Montesquieu's Esprit des lois. ... I was carried away by this work, I went to the village, began to read Montesquieu, this reading opened up endless horizons for me; I started reading Rousseau and dropped out of university, precisely because I wanted to study».

While in the Kazan hospital, he began to keep a diary, where, imitating, he set himself goals and rules for self-improvement and noted successes and failures in completing these tasks, analyzed his shortcomings and train of thought, the motives of his actions.

In 1845, Leo Tolstoy had a godson in Kazan. November 11 (23), according to other sources - November 22 (December 4), 1845 in the Kazan Transfiguration Monastery by Archimandrite Clement (P. Mozharov) under the name Luka Tolstoy, 18-year-old Jewish cantonist of the Kazan battalions of military cantonists Zalman was baptized ("Zelman") Kagan, whose godfather in the documents was a student of the Imperial Kazan University, Count L.N. Tolstoy. Prior to that - September 25 (October 7) 1845 - his brother, a student of the Imperial Kazan University, Count D. N. Tolstoy became the successor of the 18-year-old Jewish cantonist Nukhim ("Nohim") Beser, who was baptized (named Nikolai Dmitriev) by the archimandrite Kazan Uspensky (Zilantov) Monastery by Gabriel (V.N. Voskresensky).

The beginning of literary activity

Leaving the university, Tolstoy settled in Yasnaya Polyana in the spring of 1847; his activities there are partly described in "The Landowner's Morning": Tolstoy tried to establish new relations with the peasants.

His attempt to somehow smooth over the guilt of the nobility before the people dates back to the same year when Grigorovich's "Anton Goremyka" and the beginning of Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter" appeared.

In his diary, Tolstoy sets himself a huge number of goals and rules; it was possible to follow only a small number of them. Among those who succeeded are serious classes in English, music, and jurisprudence. In addition, neither the diary nor the letters reflected the beginning of Tolstoy's studies in pedagogy and charity - in 1849 he first opened a school for peasant children. The main teacher was Foka Demidych, a serf, but Lev Nikolayevich himself often taught classes.

Having left for St. Petersburg in February 1849, he spends time in revelry with K. A. Islavin, the uncle of his future wife ("My love for Islavin ruined for me the whole 8 months of my life in St. Petersburg"); in the spring he began to take an examination for a candidate for rights; he passed two exams, from criminal law and criminal proceedings, successfully, but he did not take the third exam and left for the village.

Later he came to Moscow, where he often succumbed to a passion for the game, frustrating his financial affairs a lot. During this period of his life, Tolstoy was especially passionately interested in music (he himself played the piano well and greatly appreciated his favorite works performed by others). Exaggerated in relation to most people description of the action that "passionate" music produces, the author of the "Kreutzer Sonata" drew from the sensations excited by the world of sounds in his own soul.

Favorite composers of Tolstoy were Handel and. In the late 1840s, Tolstoy, in collaboration with his acquaintance, composed a waltz, which he performed in the early 1900s with the composer Taneyev, who made the musical notation of this piece of music (the only one composed by Tolstoy).

The development of Tolstoy's love for music was also facilitated by the fact that during a trip to St. Petersburg in 1848 he met in a rather unsuitable dance-class setting with a gifted but disoriented German musician, whom he later described in Albert. Tolstoy got the idea to save him: he took him to Yasnaya Polyana and played a lot with him. Much time was also spent on revelry, play and hunting.

In the winter of 1850-1851. began to write "Childhood". In March 1851 he wrote The History of Yesterday.

Four years passed after leaving the university, when Lev Nikolayevich's brother Nikolai, who served in the Caucasus, arrived in Yasnaya Polyana, who invited his younger brother to join the military service in the Caucasus. Lev did not agree immediately, until a major loss in Moscow precipitated the final decision. The writer's biographers note the significant and positive influence of brother Nicholas on the young and inexperienced Leo in everyday affairs. The elder brother, in the absence of his parents, was his friend and mentor.

To pay off the debts, it was necessary to reduce their expenses to a minimum - and in the spring of 1851, Tolstoy hastily left Moscow for the Caucasus without a specific goal. Soon he decided to enter the military service, but there were obstacles in the form of a lack of necessary papers, which were difficult to obtain, and Tolstoy lived for about 5 months in complete seclusion in Pyatigorsk, in a simple hut. He spent a significant part of his time hunting, in the company of the Cossack Epishka, the prototype of one of the heroes of the story "Cossacks", who appears there under the name of Eroshka.

In the fall of 1851, Tolstoy, having passed the exam in Tiflis, entered the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladov, on the banks of the Terek, near Kizlyar, as a cadet. With a slight change in details, she is depicted in all her semi-wild originality in "Cossacks". The same "Cossacks" also convey a picture of the inner life of a young master who fled from Moscow life.

In a remote village, Tolstoy began to write and in 1852 sent the first part of the future trilogy, Childhood, to the Sovremennik editorial office.

The relatively late start of the career is very characteristic of Tolstoy: he never considered himself a professional writer, understanding professionalism not in the sense of a profession that provides a means of livelihood, but in the sense of the predominance of literary interests. He did not take to heart the interests of literary parties, he was reluctant to talk about literature, preferring to talk about questions of faith, morality, and social relations.

Military career

Having received the manuscript of Childhood, the editor of Sovremennik Nekrasov immediately recognized its literary value and wrote the author a kind letter, which had a very encouraging effect on him.

Meanwhile, the encouraged author is taken to continue the tetralogy "Four epochs of development", the last part of which - "Youth" - did not take place. Plans swarm in his head for The Morning of the Landowner (the finished story was only a fragment of The Novel of the Russian Landowner), The Raid, and The Cossacks. Published in Sovremennik on September 18, 1852, Childhood, signed with the modest initials of L. N., was an extraordinary success; The author was immediately ranked among the luminaries of the young literary school, along with the then loud literary fame of Turgenev, Goncharov, Grigorovich, Ostrovsky. Critics - Apollon Grigoriev, Annenkov, Druzhinin, Chernyshevsky - appreciated the depth of psychological analysis, and the seriousness of the author's intentions, and the bright bulge of realism.

Tolstoy remained in the Caucasus for two years, participating in many skirmishes with the mountaineers and exposed to the dangers of military Caucasian life. He had rights and claims to the St. George Cross, but did not receive it. When the Crimean War broke out at the end of 1853, Tolstoy transferred to the Danube army, took part in the battle at Oltenitsa and in the siege of Silistria, and from November 1854 to the end of August 1855 he was in Sevastopol.

Tolstoy lived for a long time on the dangerous 4th bastion, commanded a battery in the battle at Chornaya, was bombarded during the assault on Malakhov Kurgan. Despite all the horrors of the siege, Tolstoy wrote at this time the story "Cutting the forest", which reflected the Caucasian impressions, and the first of the three "Sevastopol stories" - "Sevastopol in December 1854". He sent this story to Sovremennik. Immediately printed, the story was read with interest by the whole of Russia and made an amazing impression with the picture of horrors that fell to the lot of the defenders of Sevastopol. The story was noticed by Emperor Alexander II; he ordered to take care of the gifted officer.

For the defense of Sevastopol, Tolstoy was awarded the Order of St. Anna with the inscription “For Honor”, ​​medals “For the Defense of Sevastopol in 1854-1855” and “In Memory of the War of 1853-1856”. Surrounded by the brilliance of fame, using the reputation of a brave officer, Tolstoy had every chance of a career, but ruined it for himself by writing several satirical songs stylized as soldiers. One of them is devoted to the failure of the military operation on August 4 (16), 1855, when General Read, misunderstanding the command of the commander-in-chief, attacked Fedyukhin Heights. The song entitled “As the fourth, the mountains carried us hard to take away”, which affected a number of important generals, was a huge success. Leo Tolstoy held accountable for her to Assistant Chief of Staff A.A. Yakimakh. Immediately after the assault on August 27 (September 8), Tolstoy was sent by courier to St. Petersburg, where he finished "Sevastopol in May 1855" and wrote "Sevastopol in August 1855", published in the first issue of "Sovremennik" for 1856, already with the full signature of the author.

"Sevastopol stories" finally strengthened his reputation as a representative of the new literary generation, and in November 1856 the writer parted from military service forever.

Traveling in Europe

In Petersburg he was warmly greeted in high society salons and in literary circles; he became especially close with Turgenev, with whom he lived for some time in the same apartment. The latter introduced him to the "Contemporary" circle, after which Tolstoy established friendly relations with Nekrasov, Goncharov, Panaev, Grigorovich, Druzhinin, Sollogub.

At this time, "Blizzard", "Two Hussars" were written, "Sevastopol in August" and "Youth" were completed, the writing of future "Cossacks" was continued.

The cheerful life did not hesitate to leave a bitter residue in Tolstoy's soul, especially since he began to have a strong discord with the circle of writers close to him. As a result, “the people were disgusted with him and he was disgusted with himself” - and at the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy left Petersburg without any regret and went abroad.

On his first trip abroad, he visited Paris, where he was horrified by the cult ("The deification of a villain, terrible"), at the same time he attends balls, museums, he admires the "sense of social freedom." However, the presence at the guillotine made such a heavy impression that Tolstoy left Paris and went to places associated with Rousseau - to Lake Geneva.

Lev Nikolaevich writes the story "Albert". At the same time, friends do not cease to be amazed at his eccentricities: in his letter to I.S.Turgenev in the fall of 1857, P.V. Annenkov tells Tolstoy's project of planting forests throughout Russia, and in his letter to V.P. Botkin, Leo Tolstoy says that he was very happy the fact that he did not become only a writer despite the advice of Turgenev. However, in the interval between the first and second trips, the writer continued to work on "Cossacks", wrote the story "Three Deaths" and the novel "Family Happiness".

The last novel was published by him in the "Russian Bulletin" by Mikhail Katkov. Tolstoy's collaboration with the Sovremennik magazine, which had been going on since 1852, ended in 1859. In the same year, Tolstoy took part in organizing the Literary Fund. But his life is not limited to literary interests: on December 22, 1858, he almost dies in a bear hunt. Around the same time, he starts an affair with a peasant woman Aksinya, and plans to marry are ripening.

On the next trip, he was mainly interested in public education and institutions aimed at raising the educational level of the working population. He closely studied questions of public education in Germany and France, both theoretically and practically, and through conversations with specialists. Of the outstanding people in Germany, he was most interested in Auerbach as the author of "Black Forest Tales" dedicated to folk life and as the publisher of folk calendars. Tolstoy paid him a visit and tried to get closer to him. In addition, he also met with the German teacher Diesterweg. During his stay in Brussels, Tolstoy met Proudhon and Lelevel. In London he visited Herzen and attended a lecture by Dickens.

Tolstoy's serious mood during his second trip to the south of France was further facilitated by the fact that his beloved brother Nikolai died of tuberculosis in his arms. The death of his brother made a huge impression on Tolstoy.

Among the stories and essays he wrote in the late 1850s are Lucerne and Three Deaths. Gradually criticism for 10-12 years, before the appearance of "War and Peace", cooled to Tolstoy, and he himself does not seek to get closer to writers, making an exception for Afanasy Fet.

One of the reasons for this alienation was Leo Tolstoy's quarrel with Turgenev, which took place at a time when both prose writers were visiting Fet on the Stepanovo estate in May 1861. The quarrel almost ended in a duel and spoiled the relationship between the writers for 17 years.

Treatment in the Bashkir nomadic Kalyk

In 1862, Lev Nikolaevich was treated with kumys in the Samara province. Initially, I wanted to undergo treatment in Postnikov's kumys hospital near Samara, but because of the large number of vacationers, I went to the Bashkir nomad camp Kalyk, on the Kalyk River, 130 miles from Samara. There he lived in a Bashkir kibitka (yurt) ate mutton, basked in the sun, drank kumis, tea and played checkers with the Bashkirs. The first time he stayed there for a month and a half. In 1871, Lev Nikolaevich came again due to deteriorating health. Lev Nikolaevich lived not in the village itself, but in a wagon near it. He wrote: "Longing and indifference have passed, I feel myself coming into a Scythian state, and everything is interesting and new ... A lot is new and interesting: both the Bashkirs, from whom the smell of Herodotus, and Russian peasants, and villages, especially charming in the simplicity and kindness of the people" ... In 1871, having fallen in love with this land, he bought from Colonel N. P. Tuchkov estates in the Buzuluk district of the Samara province, near the villages of Gavrilovka and Patrovka (now Alekseevsky district), in the amount of 2,500 dessiatines for 20,000 rubles. Lev Nikolayevich spent the summer of 1872 already at his estate. A few fathoms from the house there was a felt wagon, in which lived the family of the Bashkir Mukhammedshah, who made kumis for Lev Nikolaevich and his guests. In general, Lev Nikolayevich has visited Karalik 10 times in 20 years.

Pedagogical activities

Tolstoy returned to Russia shortly after the liberation of the peasants and became a world mediator. Unlike those who looked at the people as a younger brother who must be raised to oneself, Tolstoy thought, on the contrary, that the people are infinitely higher than the cultural classes and that the masters need to borrow the heights of the spirit from the peasants. He was actively engaged in the organization of schools in his Yasnaya Polyana and throughout the Krapivensky district.

The Yasnaya Polyana school was one of the original pedagogical attempts: in the era of admiration for the German pedagogical school, Tolstoy resolutely rebelled against any regulation and discipline in the school. In his opinion, everything in teaching should be individual - both the teacher and the student, and their mutual relations. In the Yasnaya Polyana school, the children sat where they wanted, who how much they wanted and who how they wanted. There was no specific teaching program. The teacher's only job was to keep the class interested. The classes were going well. They were led by Tolstoy himself with the help of several permanent teachers and several random ones, from his closest acquaintances and visitors.

Since 1862, he began to publish the pedagogical journal "Yasnaya Polyana", where he himself was the main employee. In addition to theoretical articles, Tolstoy also wrote a number of short stories, fables and transcriptions. Tied together, Tolstoy's pedagogical articles made up an entire volume of his collected works. At one time they went unnoticed. Nobody paid attention to the sociological basis of Tolstoy's ideas about education, to the fact that Tolstoy saw only facilitated and improved methods of exploiting the people by the upper classes in education, science, art and technological success. Moreover, from Tolstoy's attacks on European education and "progress", many have concluded that Tolstoy is a "conservative."

Soon Tolstoy left his studies in pedagogy. Marriage, the birth of their own children, plans related to the writing of the novel "War and Peace" postponed his pedagogical activities for ten years. It was only in the early 1870s that he began to create his own "Alphabet" and published it in 1872, and then published "New Alphabet" and a series of four "Russian books for reading", approved as a result of long ordeals by the Ministry of Public Education as manuals for primary educational institutions. Classes at the Yasnaya Polyana school are resumed for a short time.

It is known that the Yasnaya Polyana school had a certain influence on other domestic teachers. For example, ST Shatsky originally took it as a model when creating his own school "Vigorous Life" in 1911.

Acting as a defense attorney at trial

In July 1866, Tolstoy appeared at the court-martial as a defender of Vasil Shabunin, a company clerk who was stationed near Yasnaya Polyana of the Moscow infantry regiment. Shabunin hit the officer, who ordered to punish him with rods for being drunk. Tolstoy proved Shabunin's insanity, but the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Shabunin was shot. This case made a great impression on Tolstoy.

From his youth, Lev Nikolaevich was familiar with Lyubov Aleksandrovna Islavina, in marriage Bers (1826-1886), he loved to play with her children Liza, Sonya and Tanya. When the daughters of the Bersov grew up, Lev Nikolaevich thought about marrying his eldest daughter Lisa, hesitated for a long time until he made a choice in favor of his middle daughter Sophia. Sofya Andreevna answered with consent when she was 18 years old, and the count was 34 years old. On September 23, 1862, Lev Nikolaevich married her, having previously confessed to his premarital relations.

For a certain period of time for Tolstoy, the brightest period of his life begins - an ecstasy with personal happiness, very significant due to the practicality of his wife, material well-being, outstanding literary creativity and, in connection with it, all-Russian and world fame. It would seem that in the person of his wife he found an assistant in all matters, practical and literary - in the absence of the secretary, she copied her husband's rough drafts several times. But very soon, happiness is overshadowed by the inevitable petty quarrels, fleeting quarrels, mutual misunderstandings, which only worsened over the years.

The wedding of the elder brother Sergei Nikolaevich Tolstoy with the younger sister of Sophia Andreevna - Tatyana Bers was also planned. But Sergei's unofficial marriage with a gypsy made it impossible for Sergei and Tatiana to marry.

In addition, Sophia Andreevna's father, life-doctor Andrei Gustav (Evstafievich) Bers, even before his marriage to Islavina, had a daughter, Varvara, from V.P. Turgeneva, the mother of I.S.Turgenev. On her mother's side, Varya was the sister of I. S. Turgenev, and on her father's side, S. A. Tolstoy, thus, together with his marriage, Leo Tolstoy acquired a relationship with I. S. Turgenev.

From the marriage of Lev Nikolaevich with Sofya Andreevna, a total of 13 children were born, five of whom died in childhood. Children:
- Sergei (July 10, 1863 - December 23, 1947), composer, musicologist.
- Tatiana (October 4, 1864 - September 21, 1950). Since 1899 she has been married to Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin. In 1917-1923 she was the curator of the Yasnaya Polyana estate museum. In 1925 she emigrated with her daughter. Daughter Tatyana Mikhailovna Sukhotina-Albertini (1905-1996).
- Ilya (May 22, 1866 - December 11, 1933), writer, memoirist
- Leo (1869-1945), writer, sculptor.
- Maria (1871-1906) Buried in the village. Kochaki of the Krapivensky district (present-day Tul.obl., Shchekinsky district, Kochaki village). Since 1897 she has been married to Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky (1872-1934).
- Peter (1872-1873).
- Nikolay (1874-1875).
- Barbara (1875-1875).
- Andrey (1877-1916), an official for special assignments under the Tula governor. Member of the Russian-Japanese War.
- Michael (1879-1944).
- Alexey (1881-1886).
- Alexandra (1884-1979).
- Ivan (1888-1895).

As of 2010, in total, there were more than 350 descendants of L. N. Tolstoy (including both living and already dead) living in 25 countries of the world. Most of them are descendants of Lev Lvovich Tolstoy, who had 10 children, and the third son of Lev Nikolaevich. Since 2000, once every two years, meetings of the writer's descendants have been held in Yasnaya Polyana.

The flowering of creativity

During the first 12 years after his marriage, he creates War and Peace and Anna Karenina. At the turn of this second era of Tolstoy's literary life, there are plans conceived back in 1852 and completed in 1861-1862. "Cossacks", the first of the works in which the talent of Tolstoy was most realized.

"War and Peace"

Unprecedented success fell to the lot of "War and Peace". An excerpt from a novel entitled "Year 1805" appeared in the Russian Bulletin of 1865; in 1868, three parts came out, followed shortly by the other two. The release of War and Peace was preceded by the novel The Decembrists (1860-1861), to which the author repeatedly returned, but which remained unfinished.

All classes of society are represented in Tolstoy's novel, from emperors and kings to the last soldier, all ages and all temperaments in the space of the whole reign of Alexander I.

Anna Karenina

The infinitely happy rapture of the bliss of being is no longer in Anna Karenina, which dates back to 1873-1876. There is still a lot of gratifying experience in Levin and Kitty's almost autobiographical novel, but there is already so much bitterness in the depiction of Dolly's family life, in the unhappy end of Anna Karenina's and Vronsky's love, so much anxiety in Levin's mental life that, in general, this novel is already a transition to the third period. literary activity of Tolstoy.

In January 1871, Tolstoy sent a letter to A. A. Fet: “ How happy I am ... that I will never write verbose nonsense like "War" again» .

On December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “ People love me for those trifles - "War and Peace", etc., which they think are very important»

In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors to Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude for the creation of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy replied: “ It's like someone came to Edison and said: "I really respect you for dancing the mazurka well." I attribute meaning to my very different books (religious!)».

In the sphere of material interests, he began to say to himself: “ Well, okay, you will have 6,000 dessiatines in the Samara province - 300 horses, and then?"; in the literary sphere: " Well, well, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what of it!". When he started thinking about raising children, he asked himself: “ why?"; arguing “about how the people can achieve prosperity”, he “ all of a sudden he said to himself: what is it to me?"In general, he" I felt that what he was standing on was broken, that what he was living on was no longer there. ” The natural result was the thought of suicide.

« I, a happy person, hid the lace from myself so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the cupboards in my room, where I was alone every day, undressing, and stopped going hunting with a gun, so as not to be tempted by too easy a way to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I want: I was afraid of life, I strove away from it and, meanwhile, I hoped for something else from it».

Other works

In March 1879, in the city of Moscow, Leo Tolstoy met Vasily Petrovich Shchegolenok and in the same year, at his invitation, he came to Yasnaya Polyana, where he stayed for about a month or a month and a half. The goldfinch told Tolstoy a lot of folk tales and epics, of which more than twenty were written down by Tolstoy, and the plots of some, Tolstoy, if not written down on paper, then remembered (these records are printed in volume XLVIII of the Jubilee edition of Tolstoy's works). Six works written by Tolstoy have a source of legends and stories of the Goldfinch (1881 - "How people live", 1885 - "Two old men" and "Three elders", 1905 - "Korney Vasiliev" and "Prayer", 1907 - "The old man in the church") ... In addition, Count Tolstoy diligently wrote down many sayings, proverbs, individual expressions and words told by the Goldfinch.

The last journey, death and burial

On the night of October 28 (November 10) 1910 L.N. Tolstoy, fulfilling his decision to live the last years according to his views, secretly left Yasnaya Polyana, accompanied by his doctor D.P. Makovitsky. He began his last journey at the Shchekino station. On the same day, changing at the Gorbachevo station to another train, I reached the Kozelsk station, hired a driver and went to Optina Pustyn, and from there the next day - to the Shamordinsky monastery, where Tolstoy met with his sister, Maria Nikolaevna Tolstoy. Later, Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra Lvovna, came to Shamordino with her friend.

On the morning of October 31 (November 13) L.N. Tolstoy and his entourage departed from Shamordino to Kozelsk, where they boarded train No. 12, which had already reached the station, and was heading south. We didn’t have time to buy tickets at boarding; having reached Belyov, we bought tickets to the Volovo station. According to the testimony of those accompanying Tolstoy, there was no definite purpose for the trip. After the meeting, they decided to go to Novocherkassk, where to try to get foreign passports and then go to Bulgaria; if this fails, go to the Caucasus. However, on the way, L.N. Tolstoy fell ill with pneumonia and had to get off the train on the same day at the first big station near the village. This station turned out to be Astapovo (now Lev Tolstoy, Lipetsk region), where on November 7 (20) L.N. Tolstoy died in the house of the station chief I. I. Ozolin.

On November 10 (23), 1910, he was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, on the edge of a ravine in the forest, where, as a child, he and his brother were looking for a "green stick" that kept the "secret" of how to make all people happy.

In January 1913, a letter from Countess Sophia Tolstoy dated December 22, 1912 was published, in which she confirms the news in the press that his funeral service was performed on her husband's grave by a certain priest (she refutes rumors that he was fake) in her presence. In particular, the Countess wrote: “I also declare that Lev Nikolayevich never before his death expressed a desire not to be inveted, but earlier he wrote in his diary in 1895, as if a testament:“ If possible, then (bury) without priests and funeral services. But if it is unpleasant for those who will bury, then let them bury, as usual, but as cheap and simpler as possible. "

Report of the head of the Petersburg security department, Colonel von Cotten, to the Minister of the Interior of the Russian Empire:

« In addition to the reports of this November 8th, I am reporting to Your Excellency information about the disturbances of student youth that took place on November 9th this November ... on the occasion of the day of the burial of the deceased L.N. Tolstoy. At 12 noon, a panikhida was served in the Armenian Church for the late Leo Tolstoy, which was attended by about 200 worshipers, mostly Armenians, and a small part of the student youth. At the end of the requiem, the worshipers dispersed, but after a few minutes students and female students began to arrive at the church. It turned out that at the entrance doors of the university and the Higher Courses for Women there were advertisements that the memorial service for Leo Tolstoy would take place on November 9 at one o'clock in the afternoon in the aforementioned church. The Armenian clergy performed a requiem for the second time, by the end of which the church could no longer accommodate all the worshipers, a significant part of whom stood on the porch and in the courtyard of the Armenian Church. At the end of the requiem, everyone who was on the porch and in the churchyard sang "Eternal Memory" ...»

There is also an unofficial version of the death of Leo Tolstoy, set out in exile by I.K.Sursky from the words of an official of the Russian police. According to her, the writer, before his death, wanted to be reconciled with the church and came to Optina Pustyn for this. Here he was awaiting the order of the Synod, but feeling unwell, he was taken away by his daughter who had arrived and died at the Astapovo post station.

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 on the estate of his father, Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province. Tolstoy is an old Russian noble surname; one member of this family, the head of the Petrine secret police Peter Tolstoy, was promoted to graphs. Tolstoy's mother is the nee Princess Volkonskaya. His father and mother served as prototypes for Nikolai Rostov and Princess Mary in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). They belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy, and their tribal belonging to the upper stratum of the ruling class sharply distinguishes Tolstoy from other writers of his time. He never forgot about her (even when this awareness of him became completely negative), always remained an aristocrat and kept aloof from the intelligentsia.

Leo Tolstoy's childhood and adolescence passed between Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana, in a large family with several brothers. He left unusually vivid memories of his early entourage, of his relatives and servants, in wonderful autobiographical notes that he wrote for his biographer P.I.Biryukov. His mother died when he was two years old, his father when he was nine years old. His further upbringing was in charge of his aunt, Mademoiselle Ergolskaya, who presumably served as a prototype for Sonya in War and peace.

Leo Tolstoy in his youth. Photo of 1848

In 1844 Tolstoy entered Kazan University, where he first studied oriental languages, and then law, but in 1847 he left the university without receiving a diploma. In 1849 he settled in Yasnaya Polyana, where he tried to become useful to his peasants, but soon realized that his efforts were not useful because he lacked knowledge. During his student years and after leaving the university, he, as was usual among young people of his class, led a hectic life filled with the pursuit of pleasures - wine, cards, women - somewhat similar to the life that Pushkin led before exile to the south. But Tolstoy was unable to accept life as it is with a light heart. From the very beginning, his diary (existing since 1847) testifies to an unquenchable thirst for mental and moral justification of life, a thirst that has forever remained the guiding force of his thought. The same diary was the first experience in developing that technique of psychological analysis, which later became Tolstoy's main literary weapon. His first attempt at a more purposeful and creative line of writing dates back to 1851.

The tragedy of Leo Tolstoy. Documentary

In the same year, disgusted by his empty and useless Moscow life, he went to the Caucasus to the Terek Cossacks, where he entered the garrison artillery as a cadet (cadet means volunteer, volunteer, but of noble origin). The next year (1852) he finished his first story ( Childhood) and sent it to Nekrasov for publication in Contemporary... Nekrasov immediately accepted it and wrote about it to Tolstoy in very encouraging tones. The story was an immediate success, and Tolstoy immediately rose to prominence in literature.

On the battery, Lev Tolstoy led a rather easy and unobtrusive life of a cadet with funds; the seating area was also pleasant. He had a lot of free time, most of which he spent hunting. In those few battles in which he had to participate, he showed himself very well. In 1854 he received an officer's rank and, at his request, was transferred to the army that fought against the Turks in Wallachia (see the Crimean War), where he took part in the siege of Silistria. In the autumn of the same year, he joined the Sevastopol garrison. There Tolstoy saw a real war. He participated in the defense of the famous Fourth Bastion and in the battle on the Black River, and ridiculed the bad command in a satirical song - his only composition in verse we know of. In Sevastopol, he wrote the famous Sevastopol stories that appeared in Contemporary when the siege of Sevastopol was still going on, which greatly increased interest in their author. Soon after leaving Sevastopol, Tolstoy went on vacation to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and the next year he left the army.

Only during these years, after the Crimean War, did Tolstoy communicate with the literary world. The writers of St. Petersburg and Moscow greeted him as an outstanding master and fellow. As he later admitted, his success flattered his vanity and pride very much. But he did not get along with writers. He was too aristocratic to please this semi-bohemian intelligentsia. For him, they were too awkward plebeians, they were indignant that he clearly prefers light to their company. On this occasion, he and Turgenev exchanged sharp epigrams. On the other hand, his very mentality was not to the hearts of progressive Westernizers. He did not believe in progress or culture. In addition, his displeasure with the literary world intensified due to the fact that his new works disappointed them. Everything he wrote after Childhood, did not show any movement towards innovation and development, and Tolstoy's critics failed to understand the experimental value of these imperfect works (see for more details in the article The Early Work of Tolstoy). All this contributed to his termination of relations with the literary world. The culmination was a noisy quarrel with Turgenev (1861), whom he challenged to a duel, and then apologized for this. This whole story is very typical, and in it the character of Leo Tolstoy manifested itself, with his hidden embarrassment and sensitivity to resentment, with his intolerance of the supposed superiority of other people. The only writers with whom he maintained friendly relations were the reactionary and "land lord" Fet (in whose house a quarrel with Turgenev broke out) and a democrat-Slavophile Strakhov- people who did not at all sympathize with the main direction of the then progressive thought.

Years 1856-1861 Tolstoy spent between St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana and abroad. He traveled abroad in 1857 (and again - in 1860-1861) and brought out from there aversion to selfishness and materialism of European bourgeois civilization. In 1859 he opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana and in 1862 began publishing a pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana, in which he surprised the progressive world with the assertion that it is not the intellectuals who should teach the peasants, but rather the peasants of the intellectuals. In 1861 he assumed the post of conciliator, a post made to oversee the implementation of the liberation of the peasants. But the unsatisfied thirst for moral strength continued to torment him. He abandoned the revelry of his youth and began to think about marriage. In 1856 he made his first unsuccessful attempt to marry (to Arsenyeva). In 1860, he was deeply shocked by the death of his brother Nikolai — this was his first encounter with the inevitable reality of death. Finally, in 1862, after long hesitation (he was convinced that since he was old - thirty-four years old! - and ugly, no woman would love him) Tolstoy proposed to Sofya Andreevna Bers, and it was accepted. They got married in September of the same year.

Marriage is one of the two main landmarks in Tolstoy's life; the second milestone was his appeal... He was always pursued by one concern - how to justify his life before his conscience and achieve stable moral well-being. When he was a bachelor, he hesitated between two opposing desires. The first was a passionate and hopeless striving for that whole and unreasoning, "natural" state that he found among the peasants and especially among the Cossacks in whose village he lived in the Caucasus: this state does not seek self-justification, for it is free from self-awareness, this justification demanding. He tried to find such an unquestioning state in conscious submission to animal impulses, in the lives of his friends and (and here he was closest to achieving it) in his favorite pastime - hunting. But he was unable to be satisfied with this forever, and another equally passionate desire - to find a rational justification for life - led him aside every time he felt that he had already achieved self-satisfaction. Marriage was for him the gateway to a more stable and lasting "natural state." It was the self-justification of life and the solution to a painful problem. Family life, unreasoning acceptance and submission to it, now became his religion.

For the first fifteen years of his marriage life, Tolstoy lived in a blissful state of contented vegetation, with a pacified conscience and a pacified need for a higher rational justification. The philosophy of this plant-based conservatism is expressed with tremendous creative power in War and peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). In family life, he was extremely happy. Sofya Andreevna, almost still a girl, when he married her, easily became what he wanted to make her; he explained to her his new philosophy, and she was her indestructible stronghold and constant guardian, which eventually led to the disintegration of the family. The wife of the writer turned out to be an ideal wife, mother and mistress of the house. In addition, she became a devoted literary assistant to her husband - everyone knows that she rewrote seven times War and peace from the beginning to the end. She gave birth to many sons and daughters to Tolstoy. She did not have a personal life: she all dissolved in family life.

Thanks to Tolstoy's reasonable management of estates (Yasnaya Polyana was just a place of residence; the income was brought by a large trans-Volga estate) and the sale of his works, the family's fortune increased, as did the family itself. But Tolstoy, although absorbed and satisfied with his self-justified life, although he glorified it with unsurpassed artistic force in his best novel, still was not able to completely dissolve in family life, as his wife dissolved. "Life in Art" also did not absorb him as much as his fellows. The worm of moral thirst, though reduced to a tiny size, never died. Tolstoy was constantly worried about the questions and requirements of morality. In 1866 he defended (unsuccessfully) before a military court a soldier accused of hitting an officer. In 1873 he published articles on public education, based on which a discerning critic Mikhailovsky managed to predict the further development of his ideas.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is one of the most famous and great writers in the world. During his lifetime, he was recognized as a classic of Russian literature, his work paved a bridge between the course of two centuries.

Tolstoy proved himself not only as a writer, he was an educator and humanist, he reflected on religion, took a direct part in the defense of Sevastopol. The writer's legacy is so great, and his life itself is so ambiguous that they continue to study and try to understand him.

Tolstoy himself was a complex person, as evidenced by at least his family relationship. So numerous myths appear, both about the personal qualities of Tolstoy, his actions, and about creativity and the ideas embedded in it. Many books have been written about the writer, but we will try to debunk at least the most popular myths about him.

Flight of Tolstoy. It is a well-known fact that 10 days before his death, Tolstoy ran away from his home in Yasnaya Polyana. There are several versions about why the writer did this. Immediately they began to say that the already elderly man tried to commit suicide. The communists developed the theory that Tolstoy expressed his protest against the tsarist regime in this way. In fact, the reasons for the writer's flight from his native and beloved home were quite commonplace. Three months before that, he wrote a secret will, according to which he transferred all copyrights to his works not to his wife, Sofya Andreevna, but to his daughter Alexandra and his friend Chertkov. But the secret became clear - the wife learned about everything from the stolen diary. A scandal immediately erupted, and the life of Tolstoy himself became a real hell. His wife's tantrums prompted the writer to act that he had conceived 25 years ago - to escape. During these difficult days, Tolstoy wrote in his diary that he could no longer tolerate this and hated his wife. Sofya Andreevna herself, having learned about Lev Nikolaevich's flight, became even more furious - she ran to drown herself in the pond, beat herself in the chest with thick objects, tried to run somewhere and threatened to never let Tolstoy go anywhere.

Tolstoy had a very angry wife. From the previous myth, it becomes clear to many that only his evil and eccentric wife is to blame for the death of a genius. In fact, Tolstoy's family life was so complex that numerous studies are still trying to figure it out today. And the wife herself felt unhappy in her. One of the chapters of her autobiography is called “Martyr and Martyr”. Little was known about Sofya Andreevna's talents; she completely found herself in the shadow of her powerful husband. But the recent publication of her stories has made it possible to understand the depth of her sacrifice. And Natasha Rostova from War and Peace came to Tolstoy straight from the youthful manuscript of his wife. In addition, Sofya Andreevna received an excellent education, she knew a couple of foreign languages ​​and even translated her husband's complex works herself. The energetic woman still managed to manage the entire household, the bookkeeping of the estate, as well as sheathe and tie the entire large family. Despite all the hardships, Tolstoy's wife understood that she was living with a genius. After his death, she noted that for almost half a century of living together, she could not understand what kind of person he was.

Tolstoy was excommunicated and anathematized. Indeed, in 1910 Tolstoy was buried without a funeral service, which gave rise to the myth of excommunication. But in the memorable act of the Synod of 1901, the word "excommunication" is absent in principle. Officials from the church wrote that with his views and false teachings, the writer has long put himself outside the church and is no longer perceived by it as a member. But society understood the complex bureaucratic document with an ornate language in its own way - everyone decided that it was the church that had abandoned Tolstoy. And this story with the definition of the Synod was actually a political order. This is how the chief prosecutor Pobedonostsev took revenge on the writer for his image of a man-machine in "Resurrection".

Leo Tolstoy founded the Tolstoy movement. The writer himself was very cautious, and sometimes even with disgust, treated those numerous associations of his followers and admirers. Even after escaping from Yasnaya Polyana, the Tolstoy community was not the place where Tolstoy wanted to find shelter.

Tolstoy was a teetotaler. As you know, in adulthood, the writer gave up alcohol. But he did not understand the creation of sobriety societies throughout the country. Why do people gather if they are not going to drink? After all, big companies also mean drinking.

Tolstoy fanatically adhered to his own principles. Ivan Bunin, in his book about Tolstoy, wrote that the genius himself sometimes took a very cool attitude to the provisions of his own teaching. Once the writer with his family and close family friend Vladimir Chertkov (he was also the main follower of Tolstoy's ideas) were eating on the terrace. It was a hot summer, mosquitoes flew everywhere. One particularly annoying one sat on Chertkov's bald spot, where the writer killed him with his palm. Everyone laughed, and only the offended victim noted that Lev Nikolayevich took the life of a living being, shaming him.

Tolstoy was a great womanizer. The writer's sexual adventures are known from his own notes. Tolstoy said that in his youth he led a very bad life. But most of all he is confused by two events since then. The first is a relationship with a peasant woman even before marriage, and the second is a crime with his aunt's maid. Tolstoy seduced an innocent girl, who was then driven out of the yard. The same peasant woman was Aksinya Bazykina. Tolstoy wrote that he loved her as never before in his life. Two years before his marriage, the writer had a son, Timofey, who over the years became a huge man, like his father. In Yasnaya Polyana, everyone knew about the master's illegitimate son, about the fact that he was a drunkard, and about his mother. Sofya Andreevna even went to look at her husband's former passion, not finding anything interesting in her. And Tolstoy's intimate plots are part of his diaries of young years. He wrote about the sensuality that tormented him, about the desire for women. But something like that was commonplace for Russian noblemen of that time. And remorse for past ties never tormented them. For Sofya Andreevna, the physical aspect of love was not at all important, unlike her husband. But she managed to give birth to 13 children to Tolstoy, having lost five. Lev Nikolaevich was her first and only man. And he was faithful to her throughout the 48 years of their marriage.

Tolstoy preached asceticism. This myth appeared thanks to the writer's thesis that a person needs little to live. But Tolstoy himself was not an ascetic - he simply welcomed a sense of proportion. Lev Nikolayevich himself completely enjoyed life, he simply saw joy and light in simple things that were accessible to all.

Tolstoy was an opponent of medicine and science. The writer was not an obscurantist at all. On the contrary, he spoke about the inevitability of progress. At home, Tolstoy had a din of their first Edison phonograph, an electric pencil. And the writer rejoiced, like a child, at such scientific achievements. Tolstoy was a very civilized person, realizing that humanity pays for progress in hundreds of thousands of lives. And such a development, associated with violence and blood, the writer did not accept in principle. Tolstoy was not cruel to human weaknesses, he was outraged that the vices were justified by the doctors themselves.

Tolstoy hated art. Tolstoy knew about art, he just used his criteria to evaluate it. And didn't he have the right to do so? It is difficult to disagree with the writer that an ordinary man is unlikely to understand Beethoven's symphonies. For untrained listeners, a lot of classical music sounds like torture. But there is also such an art that is perceived excellent by both ordinary villagers and sophisticated gourmets.

Tolstoy was driven by pride. They say that it was this inner quality that manifested itself in the philosophy of the author, and even in everyday life. But is the relentless search for truth really worth considering as pride? Many people believe that it is much easier to join a teaching and serve it already. But Tolstoy could not change himself. And in everyday life, the writer was very attentive - he taught his children mathematics, astronomy, conducted physical education classes. Little Tolstoy took children to the Samara province, so that they got to know and love nature better. It's just that in the second half of his life, the genius was preoccupied with a lot of things. This is creativity, philosophy, work with letters. So Tolstoy could not give himself, as before, to his family. But this was a conflict between creativity and family, and not a manifestation of pride.

Because of Tolstoy, a revolution took place in Russia. This statement appeared thanks to Lenin's article "Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian revolution." In fact, one person, be it Tolstoy or Lenin, simply cannot be guilty of the revolution. There were many reasons - the behavior of the intelligentsia, the church, the tsar and the court, the nobility. It was all of them who gave the old Russia to the Bolsheviks, including Tolstoy. His opinion, as a thinker, was listened to. But he denied both the state and the army. True, he just spoke out against the revolution. In general, the writer did a lot to soften morals, urging people to be kinder, to serve Christian values.

Tolstoy was an unbeliever, denied faith and taught this to others. The statements that Tolstoy turned people away from the faith irritated and offended him very much. On the contrary, he declared that the main thing in his works is the understanding that there is no life without faith in God. Tolstoy did not accept the form of faith that the church imposed. And there are many people who believe in God, but do not accept modern religious institutions. For them, Tolstoy's quest is understood and is not at all terrible. Many people generally come to church after immersed in the writer's thoughts. This was especially often observed in Soviet times. And before the Tolstoyans turned towards the church.

Tolstoy constantly lectured everyone. Thanks to this ingrained myth, Tolstoy appears as a self-confident preacher, telling who and how to live. But when studying the writer's diaries, it becomes clear that he has dealt with himself all his life. So where was he to teach others? Tolstoy expressed his thoughts, but never imposed them on anyone. Another thing is that a community of followers, Tolstoyans, who tried to make the views of their leader absolute, formed around the writer. But for the genius himself, his ideas were not fixed. He considered the presence of God to be absolute, and everything else was the result of trials, torments, searches.

Tolstoy was a fanatical vegetarian. At a certain point in his life, the writer completely abandoned meat and fish, not wanting to eat the disfigured corpses of living beings. But his wife, taking care of him, poured meat broth into the mushroom broth. Seeing this, Tolstoy was not angry, but only joked that he was ready to drink meat broth every day, if only his wife would not lie to him. Other people's beliefs, including in the choice of food, were above all for the writer. They always had those at home who ate meat, the same Sofya Andreevna. But terrible quarrels over this did not happen.

To understand Tolstoy, it is enough to read his works and not study his personality. This myth gets in the way of a true reading of Tolstoy's work. Not understanding what he lived, not understanding his work. There are writers who speak with their own texts. And Tolstoy can only be understood if you know his worldview, his personal traits, relations with the state, church, and loved ones. Tolstoy's life is an exciting novel in itself, which sometimes spilled over into paper form. An example of this is War and Peace, Anna Karenina. On the other hand, the writer's work also influenced his life, including his family. So there is no escape from studying the personality of Tolstoy and interesting aspects of his biography.

You cannot study Tolstoy's novels at school - they are simply incomprehensible to high school students. It is generally difficult for modern schoolchildren to read long works, and War and Peace is, moreover, filled with historical digressions. Give our high school students abbreviated versions of novels adapted for their intellect. It is difficult to say whether this is good or bad, but in any case they will at least get an idea of ​​Tolstoy's work. Thinking that it is better to read Tolstoy after school is dangerous. After all, if you do not start reading it at that age, then then the children will not want to immerse themselves in the writer's work. So the school works proactively, knowingly giving more complex and clever things than the child's intellect can perceive. Perhaps, then there will be a desire to return to this and understand to the end. And without studying at school, such a "temptation" will not appear for sure.

Tolstoy's pedagogy has lost its relevance. Tolstoy the teacher is controversial. His teaching ideas were perceived as fun for the master, who decided to teach children according to his original method. In fact, the spiritual development of a child directly affects his intellect. The soul develops the mind, and not vice versa. And Tolstoy's pedagogy also works in modern conditions. This is evidenced by the results of an experiment, during which 90% of children achieved excellent results. Children learn to read Tolstoy's ABC, which is built on many parables with their own secrets and archetypes of behavior that reveal human nature. Gradually the program becomes more complicated. A harmonious person with a strong moral principle emerges from the walls of the school. And according to this method, about a hundred schools are engaged in Russia today.

September 23, 1862 Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy married Sofya Andreevna Bers... She at that time was 18 years old, count - 34. They lived together for 48 years, until Tolstoy's death, and this marriage cannot be called easy or cloudlessly happy. Nevertheless, Sofya Andreevna gave birth to 13 children to the count, published both the lifetime collection of his works and the posthumous edition of his letters. Tolstoy, in the last message written to his wife after a quarrel and before leaving home, on his last journey to Astapovo station, admitted that he loved her, no matter what - only he could not live with her. The story of love and life of the Count and Countess Tolstoy is recalled by AiF.ru.

Reproduction of painting by artist Ilya Repin "Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya at the table". Photo: RIA Novosti

Sofya Andreevna, both during her husband's life and after his death, was accused of not understanding her husband, not sharing his ideas, being too mundane and far from the philosophical views of the count. He himself accused her of this, this, in fact, became the cause of numerous disagreements that darkened the last 20 years of their life together. And yet Sofya Andreevna cannot be reproached for being a bad wife. Having devoted her whole life not only to the birth and upbringing of numerous children, but also to housework, household chores, solving peasant and economic problems, as well as preserving the creative heritage of the great husband, she forgot about dresses and social life.

Writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy with his wife Sophia. Gaspra. Crimea. Reproduction of a 1902 photograph. Photo: RIA Novosti

Before meeting his first and only wife, Count Tolstoy - a descendant of an ancient noble family, in which the blood of several noble families was mixed at once - had already managed to make both a military and a teaching career, was a famous writer. Tolstoy was familiar with the Bersov family even before his service in the Caucasus and travel to Europe in the 50s. Sophia was the second of three daughters of a doctor at the Moscow Palace Office Andrey Bers and his wife Lyubov Bers, nee Islavina... The Bersy lived in Moscow, in an apartment in the Kremlin, but they often visited the Islavins' Tula estate in the village of Ivitsy, not far from Yasnaya Polyana. Lyubov Alexandrovna was friends with Lev Nikolaevich's sister Mary, her brother Konstantin- with the graph himself. He saw Sophia and her sisters for the first time as children, they spent time together both in Yasnaya Polyana and in Moscow, played the piano, sang and even once staged an opera house.

Writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy with his wife Sofya Andreevna, 1910. Photo: RIA Novosti

Sophia received an excellent education at home - from childhood, her mother instilled in her children a love of literature, and later a diploma as a home teacher at Moscow University and wrote short stories. In addition, the future Countess Tolstaya from her youth was fond of writing stories and kept a diary, which would later be recognized as one of the outstanding examples of the memoir genre. Returning to Moscow, Tolstoy found no longer a little girl with whom he had once staged home performances, but a charming girl. Families again began to visit each other, and the Berses clearly noticed the count's interest in one of their daughters, but for a long time they believed that Tolstoy would woo the elder Elizabeth. For some time, as you know, he himself doubted, but after another day spent with Bers in Yasnaya Polyana in August 1862, he made a final decision. Sophia conquered him with her spontaneity, simplicity and clarity of judgment. They parted for a few days, after which the count himself came to Ivica - to the ball, which was organized by the Bersa and at which Sophia danced so that there was no doubt in Tolstoy's heart. It is even believed that the writer conveyed his own feelings at that moment in War and Peace, in the scene where Prince Andrei watches Natasha Rostova at her first ball. On September 16, Lev Nikolaevich asked the Bers for the hand of their daughter, having previously sent a letter to Sophia to make sure that she agreed: “Tell me, as an honest man, do you want to be my wife? Only if from the bottom of your heart, you can boldly say: yes, or it is better to say: no, if you have a shadow of self-doubt. For God's sake, ask yourself well. I will be scared to hear: no, but I foresee it and will find the strength to take it down. But if I’m never loved by my husband as I love, it will be awful! ” Sophia immediately agreed.

Wanting to be honest with his future wife, Tolstoy gave her his diary to read - this is how the girl learned about the stormy past of the groom, about gambling, about numerous novels and passionate hobbies, including the connection with a peasant girl Aksinya who was expecting a child from him. Sofya Andreevna was shocked, but she hid her feelings as best she could, nevertheless she will carry the memory of these revelations throughout her life.

The wedding was played just a week after the engagement - the parents could not resist the pressure of the count, who wanted to get married as soon as possible. It seemed to him that after so many years he had finally found the one he had dreamed of as a child. Having lost his mother early, he grew up listening to stories about her, and thought that his future wife should also be a faithful, loving, companion who completely shares his views, mother and helper, simple and at the same time able to appreciate the beauty of literature and the gift her husband. This is exactly how he saw Sofya Andreevna - an 18-year-old girl who abandoned city life, secular receptions and beautiful outfits for the sake of living next to her husband on his country estate. The girl took care of the household, gradually getting used to rural life, so different from that to which she was accustomed.

Leo Tolstoy with his wife Sophia (center) on the porch of the Yasnaya Polyana house on Troitsin Day, 1909. Photo: RIA Novosti

Firstborn Seryozha Sofya Andreevna gave birth to in 1863. Tolstoy then set about writing War and Peace. Despite a difficult pregnancy, his wife not only continued to do household chores, but also helped her husband in his work - she copied drafts completely.

Writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and his wife Sofya Andreevna drinking tea at home in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908. Photo: RIA Novosti

For the first time, Sofya Andreevna showed her character after the birth of Seryozha. Unable to feed him herself, she demanded that the count bring a wet nurse, although he was categorically against, saying that then the children of this woman would be left without milk. For the rest, she fully followed the rules established by her husband, solved the problems of peasants in the surrounding villages, even treated them. She taught and raised all the children at home: in total, Sofya Andreevna gave birth to 13 children to Tolstoy, five of whom died at an early age.

Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (left) with his grandchildren Sonya (right) and Ilya (center) in Krekshino, 1909. Photo: RIA Novosti

The first twenty years passed almost cloudlessly, but grievances accumulated. In 1877, Tolstoy finished work on Anna Karenina and felt a deep dissatisfaction with life, which upset and even offended Sofya Andreevna. She, who sacrificed everything for him, in return received dissatisfaction with the life that she so diligently arranged for him. Tolstoy's moral quest led him to formulate the commandments by which his family now had to live. The count called, among other things, for the simplest existence, the rejection of meat, alcohol, smoking. He dressed in peasant clothes, made clothes and shoes for himself, his wife and children, he even wanted to give up all property in favor of the villagers - Sofya Andreevna had to work hard to dissuade her husband from this act. She was sincerely offended that her husband, who suddenly felt guilty before all of humanity, did not feel guilt before her and was ready to give up everything she had acquired and protected for so many years. He expected from his wife that she would share not only his material, but also his spiritual life, his philosophical views. For the first time, having had a big quarrel with Sofya Andreevna, Tolstoy left home, and when he returned, he no longer trusted her manuscript - now the responsibility to rewrite the drafts fell on his daughters, to whom Tolstaya was very jealous. The death of the last child also knocked her down, Vani born in 1888 - he did not live to be seven years old. This grief at first brought the spouses closer, but not for long - the abyss that separated them, mutual resentment and misunderstanding, all this pushed Sofya Andreevna to seek solace on the side. She took up music, began to travel to Moscow to take lessons from a teacher Alexandra Taneeva... Her romantic feelings for the musician were not a secret either for Taneev himself or for Tolstoy, but the relationship remained friendly. But the count, who was jealous, angry, could not forgive this "half-betrayal".

Sophia Tolstaya at the window of the house of the head of the Astapovo station I.M. Ozolin, where the dying Leo Tolstoy lies, 1910. Photo: RIA Novosti.

In recent years, mutual suspicion and resentment grew into an almost manic obsession: Sofya Andreevna re-read Tolstoy's diaries, looking for something bad that he could write about her. He scolded his wife for being too suspicious: the last, fatal quarrel took place from October 27 to 28, 1910. Tolstoy packed his things and left home, leaving Sofya Andreevna a farewell letter: “Don't think that I left because I don't love you. I love you and I regret you from the bottom of my heart, but I cannot act differently from what I am doing. " According to the stories of the family, after reading the note, Tolstaya rushed to drown herself - she was miraculously pulled out of the pond. Soon, information came that the count, having caught a cold, was dying of pneumonia at the Astapovo station - the children and his wife, whom he did not want to see even then, came to the sick man's house of the station superintendent. The last meeting of Lev Nikolaevich and Sofya Andreevna took place just before the death of the writer, who died on November 7, 1910. The countess outlived her husband by 9 years, was engaged in publishing his diaries and until the end of her days listened to reproaches that she was a wife not worthy of a genius.